'Climategate' inquiry mostly vindicates scientists

July 7, 2010
By RAPHAEL G. SATTER , Associated Press Writer

Chairman of the review group, Sir Muir Russell talks to the media on their findings at the Royal Institution in London, Tuesday July 7, 2010, during the release of their report into the University of East Anglia e-mails on climate change. The independent report into the leak of hundreds of e-mails from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved, a finding many in the field hope will calm the global uproar dubbed "Climategate." The inquiry by Russell into the scandal at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit found there was no evidence of dishonesty or corruption in the more than 1,000 e-mails stolen and posted to the Internet late last year, but he did chide the scientists involved for failing to share their data with critics.(AP Photo/Sang Tan)

(AP) -- An independent report into the leak of hundreds of e-mails from one of the world's leading climate research centers on Wednesday largely vindicated the scientists involved, saying they acted honestly and that their research was reliable.

But the panel of inquiry, led by former U.K. civil servant Muir Russell, did chide scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit for failing to share their data with critics.

"We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt," Russell said. "But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness."

Russell's inquiry is the third major investigation into the theft and dissemination of more than 1,000 e-mails taken from a back-up server at the university.

They caused a sensation when they were published online in November: They captured researchers speaking in scathing terms about their critics, discussing ways to stonewall skeptics of man-made climate change, and talking about how to freeze opponents out of peer-reviewed journals.

The ensuing scandal energized skeptics and destabilized the U.N. climate change conference at Copenhagen. The research center's chief, Phil Jones, stepped down while Russell, a former vice-chancellor of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, was brought in to investigate.

Russell's carefully worded report said there was no evidence Jones had destroyed evidence that he knew critics were seeking under the Freedom of Information Act. But it did say he had pushed colleagues to delete e-mails that he thought might provide ammunition to skeptics.

It also criticized the university for being "unhelpful" in dealing with Freedom of Information Act requests - an issue Britain's data-protection watchdog has already flagged.

The inquiry also revisited the now infamous e-mail exchange between Jones and a colleague in which the climatologist refers to a "trick" used to "hide the decline" in a variable used to track global temperatures.

Some skeptics took that as proof that scientists were faking global temperature trends. Russell's report rejected that conclusion, but did say that the resulting graph - which graced the front cover of the World Meteorological Organization's 1999 report on climate change - was "misleading" because it wasn't explicit enough about the way in which the underlying data had been chopped and spliced together.

Finally, the report largely forgave the intemperate language in many of the e-mails. Exchanges widely reported in the media had one scientist cheering the death of a prominent skeptic and another jokingly referring to the possibility of taking out a mafia hit on a colleague.

Russell said the extreme comments and jokes were typical of e-mail communications - and understandable given the politicized nature of climate research.

University of East Anglia Vice-Chancellor Edward Acton dismissed concerns about possible deleted e-mails, saying that the report had "completely exonerated" Jones, who would now return to the Climatic Research Unit as director of research - a new position that Acton said would free him from administrative duties.

Acton also said the university has since overhauled the way it dealt with requests for data.

Russell's report follows a British parliamentary inquiry that largely backed the scientists involved and another independent investigation that gave a clean bill of health to the science itself.

The reports have been criticized by skeptics who alleged they were incomplete or biased.

It has been difficult to gauge the impact of the scandal, which played widely in the British and U.S. media. In Britain, there is some evidence that public concern over global warming has been diluted, although not by much.

An Ipsos MORI poll published last month suggested that 78 percent of Britons believed that the world's climate was changing, compared with 91 percent five years earlier. Seventy-one percent of respondents expressed concern about global warming, versus 82 percent in 2005. The pollster surveyed 1,822 people aged 15 and over in interviews between January and March 2010.

Some scientists have said the scandal has made it impossible for researchers to hide data from their critics and pushed those who do believe in the dangers of man-made global warming to be more vocal about their doubts.

"The release of the e-mails was a turning point, a game-changer," Mike Hulme, a professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia, told The Guardian newspaper before the Russell report was released. "Already there is a new tone. Researchers are more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties, for instance."

Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, agreed that openness was the now order of the day.

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(AP) -- The United Nations will conduct its own investigation into e-mails leaked from a leading British climate science center in addition to the probe by the University of East Anglia, a senior U.N. climate official said ...

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40 comments

I read the emails and search all the emails for that infamous keyword "trick" that was plastered all over the media; there was nothing of significance. The word trick appeared 8 times, only one was any concern and it would only be a concern to people who do not know mathematics. They were referening to a "mathematical trick" where they filled in missing climate data with derivated data obtained from the growth rings of trees. Sure, it is a mathematical trick, but math is full of tricks. It's no different than using differential equations to solve the real, underlying, limit functions.

And are they after the hacker? Nope. And what did they do with the hacker who broke into Sarah Pallins emails-->prison. Makes me wonder if this hacker was on the payroll of big oil, the media certainly was for this fictional scandle.

The word "trick" was the only original email content the media actually told the public, just one word with zero context. The rest was propaganda gazoo.

@gunslingor1I have not done the research of which you speak, but to me, the "trick" you are talking about sounds like mathematical curve fitting. As I am sure that you are well aware, curve fitting is the central premise of all mathematical modeling without which, there would be no mathematical modeling at all.

So just like the myth that a Hummer was greener over its lifetime than a Prius, this myth of impropriety will, hopefully, cease. Hummers have now gone the way of the dinosaurs, and the AGW crowd will eventually have to acknowledge the reality that fossil fuel use is adding CO2 and other green house gases to the atmosphere and those gasses have an effect on the Earth's climate.

To these scientists, data transparency is essential. It is too bad that they apparently were less than transparent with their data.

So just like the myth that a Hummer was greener over its lifetime than a Prius, this myth of impropriety will, hopefully, cease. Hummers have now gone the way of the dinosaurs, and the AGW crowd will eventually have to acknowledge the reality that fossil fuel use is adding CO2 and other green house gases to the atmosphere and those gasses have an effect on the Earth's climate.

Some myths last entirely too long, ie the myth of divinity found in all world religions.

Somewhat agree with skeptic. Idiots and people with hidden agendas will always be out there affecting the mindset of other idiots. Give them one excuss, even if it's invalid, and they'll run with it for half a century so they don't have to change anything. There are plenty of examples, like "clean coal", "space umbrella's" (see these comments: http://www.physor...6.html), "nuclear power is bad because the plant could explode nuclearly", "bleeding cures everything!", etc...

Unless you hold people accountable for lieing, the lie will be self perpetuating.

""We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt," Russell said. "But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness.""They were honestly hiding something?All data should be available for all to analyze.

They were not hiding anything. If they were, then what? All data is and always has been easily obtainable from this institution. All they did wrong was act like normal human office workers, exchanging a few jokes and informal discussions via email.

ahh maybe where you live but in more affluent areas such as West Palm Beach, FL you can find the Hummer dealership -- yes HUMMER DEALERSHIP the sign says HUMMER and thats the only thing in the lot -- right between the Porche dealership and the Audi dealership.

@marjon

There is nothing inconsistant with saying they were honest and yes they were trying to devise ways of downplaying opposition.

No one gets all the information. Public or private. Public universities do data analysis on items that will never see the light of day, and no one will remeber where the data is stored, if a grad student left with it, or if they have the dat what is it's syntax.

I've read several professional statistician's opinions of the maths used by the "climate scientists". Based on the published data, none of the stat guys found it possible to estimate a global temperature within 2 degrees with any certainty. Yet the "climate scientists" regularly report changes in global temperature in TENTH'S of a DEGREE.

"Finally, the report largely forgave the intemperate language in many of the e-mails. "

So is that the role of an investigator? The point isn't whether the investigator approves or disapproves of the action. The investigator is just supposed to find out what actions took place and what did not.

Just for a laugh, copy this article into notepad and delete every piece that isn't a clear statement of fact. If you filter out the editorial/opinion of the 'investigator' there's not much good to say about the credibility of the researchers in question here. This investigator actually says that they were guilty of just about everything they were accused of in at least some degree.

No, gunslingor1, the raw data and the formulas used to modify it are not easily obtainable. The people involved in the work wouldn't even have an easy time giving it to you because several different groups of people using different methods are involved here. I think it's a lot more complicated than you realiz

When you start with a raw temp reading, then you try to average out the known variations like seasons and daily weather changes and then try to remove the heat island effects, your left with an estimate that is only as good as your efforts at removing the noise from the data set. Unfortunately, there are several different methodologies for removing that noise and they don't agree with one another. As well, if you take any one of those methods and apply it broadly accross all the data you get wild inconsistencies that have to be manually adjusted by human intuition.

No one gets all the information. Public or private. Public universities do data analysis on items that will never see the light of day, and no one will remeber where the data is stored, if a grad student left with it, or if they have the dat what is it's syntax.

They had better be a bit more conscientious if they what to use such data to take over the world's economy or try some way to 'fix' the climate.

I've read several professional statistician's opinions of the maths used by the "climate scientists". Based on the published data, none of the stat guys found it possible to estimate a global temperature within 2 degrees with any certainty. Yet the "climate scientists" regularly report changes in global temperature in TENTH'S of a DEGREE.

Actually, it is more like 1 hundreth of degree. Your statistical friends certainly dont understand some basic methods method of data analysis. This is unfortunately very common for statistician.

No, gunslingor1, the raw data and the formulas used to modify it are not easily obtainable. The people involved in the work wouldn't even have an easy time giving it to you because several different groups of people using different methods are involved here. I think it's a lot more complicated than you realiz

No data were easily available and anyone with a minimal mathematical background could reproduce the result with a minimal effort. This has been done many times by amateurs.

Off course, skeptics are not able to do the same kind of analysis even if they have the proper data.

2) deniers then call foul on supposed proof of scientific forgery and for independant inquiry so that those dirty climate scientists can't "take over the world."

3) Said inquiry clears institute of all wrongdoing expect use of coarse language and getting annoyed at having to answer silly questions asked by silly deniers who don't actually care what the answer is.

4) Deniers clearly point out how the inquiry couldn't possibly have been objective since it didn't agree with them.

5) Deniers once again reitirate their paranoia of global dictatorship that the climate scientists are about to setup!

you guys crack me up...You're just never happy if it contradicts your point of view. Mr. Oliver K. Manuel and Marjon is by far the best exemple trying to quickly divert from the result of the inquiry to terrible oppression (world domination or scientific repression).

Some extracts from the Muir Report"We demonstrated that any independent researcher can download station data directly from primary sources and undertake their own temperature trend analysis".Writing computer code to process the data "took less than two days and produced results similar to other independent analyses. No information from CRU was needed to do this".Asked whether it would be reasonable to conclude that anyone claiming instrumental records were unavailable or vital code missing was incompetent, another panel member, Professor Peter Clarke from Edinburgh University, said: "It's very clear that anyone who'd be competent enough to analyse the data would know where to find it."It's also clear that anyone competent could perform their own analysis without let or hindrance." nuff said

If global temperatures were really increasing, why was it necessary to use

"Mike's Nature trick . . . to hide the decline" ?

Now you're going in circles again, trying to begin, again, at the beginning. I'm not going to cite this for you, as you are fully capable of finding the articles wherein Jones explained exactly what was meant by that statement, and the context in which it was made.

Not to mention that you are looking at an explicitly exculpatory judgement, as we speak, right here on physorg!

I, for one, don't appreciate you dragging this back to square one, with the aim in mind of keeping the denial of those who deny inflated with false purpose.

ahh maybe where you live but in more affluent areas such as West Palm Beach, FL you can find the Hummer dealership -- yes HUMMER DEALERSHIP the sign says HUMMER and thats the only thing in the lot -- right between the Porche dealership and the Audi dealership.

Basically, I rest my case! :O In an area where one's worth is measured by having a yacht a foot longer than the neighbor's yacht, I would expect this. I suppose those people would also ignore warnings of sharks in the area and then complain that they got bit by a shark after swimming in the danger zone. ;)

Two centuries ago, people used to think that humanity could never deplete or pollute the oceans. Now, all anyone needs to do to dispel that myth is go visit the latest gulf coast beach where the oil has arrived.

Another example of depletion is Easter Island; what's that saying about doing the same thing and expecting different results?

Oliver K. Manuel: The issue was that certain tree temperature proxies did not agree with, um, every other temperature measurement system we had, going down when everything else was going up. This was the "decline" that was being "hidden." The discrepancy between the dendrochronology record and other temperature proxies was never actually hidden, at least in the sense that you use the word--obviously enough (otherwise, I wouldn't know about it). There is, I suppose, a remotely small chance that the dendrochronology record was right, while everything else (including surface measurements, satellite measurements, etc,) was wrong--

but it's far more likely that one thing was interfering with the tree record than that many, many things were interfering with all other systems of measurement. They weren't "hiding" anything; they were discarding data that they knew (based on far more reliable sources) to be unreliable.

...And I'm absolutely SURE that you've had this explained to you before. Obviously, you don't accept it as an explanation, and I doubt very much that anything I've just said will change your mind. Out of curiosity, why don't you think this explanation has any merit?

This is precisely the situation that provoked my (possibly)harsh rebuke a little earlier in the thread.

The "issues" raised by that quote, taken out-of-context, and run with by would-be AGW debunkers, and subsequently clearly and comprehensively re-contextualized (just as you've detailed above) by Jones, were all reported on here, at physorg, AS THEY HAPPENED.

These are facts of which Oliver is well aware, I am sure. And that is what provoked my outrage- the revisiting of old issues to respin controversy-the old circular argument gambit.

If not, then I hereby apologize.

Having said that, I must also point out just how disgusting it is to see a dog return to its own vomit.

The problem with the data isn't in the statistics really. It's in the inconsistency of the data itself. Most collection sites are too close to urban areas (especially as you go back farther in time), so you have to adjust those readings down by some amount. The magnatude of that adjustment is a complicated problem. It changes by season due to several factors, such as wind pattern changes and the angle of sunlight. Each individual site has its own unique set of circumstances. Satalite temp readings are similarly difficult to synthesize because they have to be filtered for clouds in addition to urban heat islands and ground temp noise among other factors. The head of NASA has publicly stated this more than once. Your over-confidence in the raw data is a little mis-guided. I know your intentions are good, but it helps if you really have a good grasp of what you are looking at when you see the "raw" data.

P.S. If you aren't aware of the adjustments made to the raw data, then you haven't even begun to read about how climate science is performed. There's a ton of work involved in collecting the data. They don't just read a thermometer and write down all the numbers. For example, if you have a ring of thermometers around a city and some in the city, you'll notice high readings in the city and down-wind of the city. You have to adjust those readings because they don't indicate climate change. If you bulldozed the city to the ground and planted trees, then the temps would immediately go back down. As seasons change, wind patterns change, so the sites downwind from the city will change. You have to figure out where those sites are throughout the year and make the proper adjustments. Adjustments will be of different magnitude everywhere you go too. Of course you're also using ground level measurements as a proxy for the whole atmosphere, and there's different opinions how that works too.

Neither Sir Muir Russell nor the climate scientists themselves are to blame for the current quagmire.

President Dwight Eisenhower warned us of this threat to science and to our free society in his farewell address to the nation on 17 January 1961:

"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded."

"Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

"It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society."

I've read several professional statistician's opinions of the maths used by the "climate scientists". Based on the published data, none of the stat guys found it possible to estimate a global temperature within 2 degrees with any certainty. Yet the "climate scientists" regularly report changes in global temperature in TENTH'S of a DEGREE.

Actually, it is more like 1 hundreth of degree. Your statistical friends certainly dont understand some basic methods method of data analysis. This is unfortunately very common for statistician.

My "statistical friend" is Dr. Jerry Pournelle and several of his contributors.

http:/www.jerrypournelle.com

And before you say, "well, he's just a science fiction writer", look up his bio. He is no more "just a writer" than Asimov.

Perhaps the title should have read "Climategate inquiry does not vidicate scientists." After all, why should researchers keep their data from others? Whether one can independently get the data means one cannot validate EACRU's data. And without their computer model, one cannot reproduce their results. Thus, the researchers promoted their view, and prevented others from reproducing their results, and more importantly, allowing others to produce criticism or better approaches to analyzing the data.

I just learned that one of the panel's 4 members was on the faculty of East Anglia's School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years, and signed a petition that stated the scientists "adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity." So the impartiality is questionable. Here's review of the report by Cato: http://www.cato.o...id=11970

Yes, indeed. Ordinary falsehoods become official information after spending even more public funds.

Reminds me of the one hundred and seventy eight (178) coauthors of the report from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory that solar neutrinos just oscillate away in exactly the proportions needed to save the Standard Solar Model of a Hydrogen-filled Sun.

They don't. Hydrogen is smoke from the solar engine (a neutron decay-product) as CO2 is smoke (a combustion product) from furnaces and autos.

Each year the Sun discards billions of metric tonnes of Hydrogen in the solar wind.

Hydrogen accumulates at the top of the solar atmosphere, as CO2 accumulates at the top of chimneys.

Logic and quantitative information often help identify flaws in "information."